The present invention comprises a new and distinct cultivar of geranium, botanically known as Pelargonium hortorum Bailey, and hereinafter referred to by the cultivar name Americana White Splash. The new cultivar is propagated from a seedling resulting from the cross of a proprietary seed parent known as 3508-1 that has a blushing white flower with a rose colored spot pattern at the base of each petal. The seed parent was derived by crossing the variety Americana Light Pink (U.S. Plant Pat. No. 7,938) with an unpatented white flowered breeding line and thereafter selecting individual seedlings that had the white flower color and the basal petal spot pattern. The pollen parent used to make this hybrid is also a proprietary line, it is known as 3380-1. This plant is freely flowering, light lavender in color and it has the petal spot pattern, semi-double flower. This line was derived by crossing white flowered plants with pink flowered plants that also had the basal petal spot, and subsequently line crossing and selecting for near white flowers with the petal spot pattern.
Americana White Splash is a product of a planned breeding program intended to create new geranium cultivars with white colored flowers that have a basal petal spot pattern, semi-double flower form, green foliage, vigorous growth on a plant that is rounded in habit, freely flowering and with superior cutting productivity.
The new cultivar was created in 1993 in Gilroy, Calif. and has been repeatedly asexually reproduced by cuttings in Gilroy, Calif. and Guatemala over a 19 month period. It has also been trialed at Okemos, Mich. It has been found to retain its distinctive characteristics through successive propagations; and this novelty appears to be firmly fixed.